A Green Healing day chasing butterflies offered stunning colors of Winged Garden Friends and Flowers too. I had a feeling if I went to the Tithonia garden around Noon that I would get to see the butterflies, and boy was I right on!

Well, I’m back sooner than expected to share more Sunflower photos. I really can’t help myself. If I wasn’t tired, which I am, I’d give fun names to the ones I saw today! I guess some folks might think if you’ve seen one Sunflower, then you’ve seen them all, but today only strengthened my personal observation that each one is unique.

Note: Click on images to see the original size.

My friend and I had gone to the gardens to have lunch under the naturally vine-crafted Gazebo by the herb garden. I thought it would be cool spot to sit, but I used all except one napkin for wiping the out-pour of sweat on my body, and I had on a summer dress!

I may be a mountain woman in my heart, but I’m not sure. We lived in the mountains when I was a toddler, but soon moved to the Piedmont area of North Carolina, which is where I’ve spent most of my life. We’ve always had rather hot and humid summers in NC, but they’re hotter now than they were twenty (or so) years ago. I later moved to the mountains with my teenage son. After living there for several years, I learned that I like temperatures around 72 degrees. We had to move back to the Piedmont area for medical reasons, but I’ve never forgotten those beautiful blue hills. I’ve regressed. Back to Sunflowers…

My friend, Camila, who is also a volunteer in Horticulture Therapy at the Botanical gardens, was watering the Sunflowers when my friend and I arrived for our lunch outing.

Camila likes the heat. I salute her for enduring it because she is now solely responsible for tending the Horticulture Therapy gardens, which includes the Sunflowers. Yay for Plant People, especially ones who volunteer their time.

As much as I love the ‘Drop Dead Red’ variety of sunflowers, an amazingly large yellow one in the back of the garden overlooking the hill and the woods where the nature trails are was most worthy of our attention.

Camila had earlier tied the plant’s thick stem to a bamboo pole. “That one is so big it was falling down,” she said with a loving little laugh. We’re a lot alike in our love for the Sunflowers, as for all plants.

SUNFLOWER SMILES

Is that a hummingbird hovering above?

I think perhaps the big bloom (above) is prepared for a special event. I mean who knows what goes on in that garden when the humans are sleeping and the Moon is shining. For all I know they have parties and beauty contests! I especially like the blown petals with fashionably curled tips on the big one with a very heavy head (above), but I must say, they were all beautiful!

Below is the tallest flower in the garden, not yet blooming, and Camila, a special one of the Plant People.

The Horticulture Therapy group is harvesting Watermelons today, so I gotta go!

Every Sunflower I see has a different personality. I love each one of them!

This Sunflower is a surprise from last year’s seeds at the Botanical gardens. It stands alone and wonderfully tall by the back corner of a building. I especially like this beauty because it’s taller than the others and when my dog and I hike along the nature trail below, I can see it smiling down on us from the hill where it lives.

I’d like to share more Sunflower images with you because they’re all lovely, but life is demanding me to be elsewhere much of the time lately. I hope to have more time for blogging in the very near future.

From the Sunflower Garden

“The Sunflow’r, thinking ’twas for him foul shame
To nap by daylight, strove t’ excuse the blame;
It was not sleep that made him nod, he said,
But too great weight and largeness of his head.”
~ Abraham Cowley